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The Madonna Whore Complex

Over the past 3 years, getting into this dating advice and being attempting to be more emotionally aware. I found myself harboring certain beliefs and attitudes towards the opposite sex. I also chanced upon a concept termed as the madonna whore complex.

I was working with my psychologist about core beliefs such as self-esteem, self-worth and working through past memories.

So What’s The Madonna Whore Complex?

In simple terms, it’s a men’s inability to maintain sexual arousal in a committed and loving relationship. This reminded me of first serious relationship. There were similar problems. Well, it could be the overuse of pornography or it could be the madonna whore complex, either way, these are issues to be tackled.

Sigmund Freud, a famous psychologist, noticed that men who grew up with strenuous relationships with their mother developed a complex toward women. They saw women as either saintly Madonnas or debased prostitutes. Hence, the “Madonna-Whore” complex.

Causes

He argued that the Madonna Whore Complex is caused by a split between the affectionate and sexual currents in the male desire. His theory has got to do with penis and castration fears, also known as the Oedipus complex. Well, Freud’s theories surrounding the Oedipus complex has been largely challenged and debunked by modern day psychology.

Other theories suggests that such a split is caused when the victim is raised by a cold but overprotective mother. This lack of emotional nurturing results in a man courting someone with maternal qualities, hoping to fulfil a need for intimacy unmet in childhood.

His need to capture his mother’s attention and affection as a child is later projected onto the woman he chooses to pursue. He ends up looking a woman with similar psychological make up with his mother. Since he can’t think of his mother in a sexual manner, this causes the man to lose sexual desire for his partner.

This merely returns repressed feelings surrounding the earlier relationship with his mother, hence preventing sexual satisfaction with his current partner.

The complex plays itself out is in the paradox in which any woman a man sexual desires must be a slut or a whore, and any woman who loves him and adores him is considered pure and consequently, he fears intimacy and feels inferior around her.

The Madonnas

The men that saw women as Madonnas put girls on a pedestal. They worship feminine love, romanticize self-sacrifice and suffering for the sake of it. They are people pleasing and supplicant. They are the ones that find themselves doing things for women over and over again, although there’s no form of reciprocation.

These men, often known as women lovers, are out of touch with their objectification of women: the desire for sex.

The Whores

On the flip side, there are the ones that see women as whores. They see women as something to be researched and conquered. They see affection and love as something that’s worked for and struggled for. They perceive women to be fundamentally different from themselves. These are the guys that on angry rants about how women not knowing their social roles, being dirty, slutty and more, and more. I commonly see these beliefs expressed in the Singapore pick up artist community.

These men, often known as women haters, are out of touch with their desire for love and affection.

Both perceptions are unhealthy fixations. Ones of them obsesses for love, the other obsesses for sex. Both perceptions lead to manipulative and dysfunctional relationships. One is the user, the other is the used. One is the abused, the other is the abuser. Both fail to see the opposite sex as equals. One sees them as superior, and the other as inferior.

The Madonna whore complex can often unconscious and subtle, and it’s not hard to find the same person flipping to and fro between these two different perceptions.

The Madonna Whore Complex in the Asian Culture

It’s not uncommon to hear men, especially in Singaporean culture state that they want to marry a good girl. She preferably has to be virgin, hasn’t dated a lot, and is pure and innocent. He, on the other hand, desires to date and have sexual experiences with as many other girls as possible, that he would never think of starting a romantic or committed relationship with.

Commonly expressed as: “I want to fuck many girls, but I want to marry the good one, that hasn’t fucked a lot.” This suggests ‘good girls’ don’t desire sex as much as ‘bad girls’. Or ‘good girls’ are defined as good because they haven’t had multiple sexual experiences.

Not only this is a double standard, but may be a form of expression of the madonna whore complex.

Our Beliefs: How Do You View Women?

More importantly, the madonna-whore complex concept can be used as an idea to keep in mind to improve your perceptions of female sexuality. Are you living out those double standards? Do your interactions with women involve just the objectification of women, or do your interactions with women lean towards feminine worship? Has the relationship with your mother affected how you perceive dating and relationships with the opposite sex?

I remembered having similar experiences during my teenage years. This helped me become more introspective about my relationship with my parents. How they affected my emotional maps and beliefs.

This also helped me become more objective in how I feel towards my relationship with girls: emotional chemistry, lofty notions of love, may be just an expression of feminine worship. Some times, my knee jerk reaction to girls that are my sexually proactive isn’t ideal either. All of these could be an expression of the Madonna Whore complex.

I am interested in expanding upon such psychological theories in future posts with more research. I also hope to outgrow just writing on dating concepts as a Singapore dating coach, but also on culture, psychology, and masculinity in the near future.